To "maximally integrate" Kherson region to the structure of Russia, the occupiers want to return the coat of arms from the times of the Russian Empire.
Ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova announced this on Telegram.
According to her, the occupiers also want to grant the local population the right to acquire russian citizenship.
"On the occupied lands, the occupiers are trying to establish rouble payments and also to re-establish railway connections with the permanently occupied Crimea," the ombudsman wrote.
Those who object “accelerated integration" are are tortured in basements. In Kherson, Novooleksiyivka village, Genichesk city, the occupation "administrations" or russian troops are compiling lists of activists who took part in the civilian blockade of Crimea in 2015, or those who served in the ATO. They come to their homes and take them away at gunpoint. Currently, 500 people are staying in camps in the occupied Kherson region and face brutal torture by the occupiers.
"Such actions by russian occupiers in temporarily occupied territories constitute war crimes as defined by the Statute of the International Military Tribunal and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and violation of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War," Lyudmyla Denysova said. She appealed to the UN Board to investigate violations of human rights during the military invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation to take into account these facts of war crimes and violations of human rights in Ukraine.
We would like to point out that 2,100 residents of the village of Visokopilska in Kherson region, part of which is occupied by the russians evacuated on their own.